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DC fault protection is the bottleneck that restricts the development of modular multilevel converter based high voltage direct current (MMC-HVDC) system. Superconducting fault current limiters (SFCL) is an ideal protection device that can significantly limit short circuit current and enhance the fault tolerance ability of MMC-HVDC system. At present, several topologies of SFCLs have been proposed, but there is no systematical study of their current-limiting characteristics in MMC-HVDC. This paper studies the development process of DC short-circuit faults in MMC-HVDC system, and analyzes its demand for fault current limiting. Then, resistive type, saturated iron core type and hybrid type SFCL are modeled and their limiting effect of critical fault current under DC pole-to-pole fault is tested. By comparison, the current-limiting characteristics of three types of SFCL are concluded. Results show that resistive SFCL has best performance in steady state, while saturated iron core SFCL has best performance in transient state. The current-limiting characteristic of hybrid type SFCL is between the other two types. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the current limiting behavior based on an air-core high-temperature superconducting transformer (HTST) and a group of inductor–capacitor series resonant limiters. The air-core HTST is composed of four same double-pancake type high-temperature superconducting coils made up of Bi-2333/Ag tape, and both of primary and secondary windings include two series superconducting coils. It plays the roles of inductive fault current limiting and transformation impedance; in addition, the magnetic flux saturation can also be avoided. Meanwhile, the inductor and capacitor series with the secondary winding of the air-core HTST in series resonance state are the conventional devices. The influence of them on the circuit can almost be ignored, because they are in series resonant state in normal operation. While the fault current appeared in the primary circuit, it will be limited by the impedance of the air-core HTST and the inductor without quench (the inductor and capacitor would quit the series resonant state). According to the preliminary experiment carried out in our laboratory, this superconducting current limiting module can operate as expected, and its behavior is satisfactory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Currently, HVDC is in the spotlight for long-distance transmission and power connection between countries. Among them, MMC-HVDC is a new conversion technology that can solve the problems of switching loss and harmonics. MMC consists of many submodules connected in series. And the one submodule is composed of IGBTs, Diode, and Capacitor. At the transient state, the charged capacitor is discharged and added to the fault current. It will generate tens of times the surge current during the delays all IGBTs turn-off. This causes semiconductor device destruction. To solve this problem, we applied SFCL with fast response characteristics to the MMC. The response speed of the resistive SFCL is faster than that of the MMC system protection device, which can effectively limit the capacitor discharge current before the protection device operates. In this paper, AC grid, MMC-HVDC, DC cable and SFCL were modeled using PSCAD/EMTDC. After that, we confirmed the capacitor discharge current, current limiting rate, and interruption characteristics through DC line short circuit failure simulation. As a result, SFCL effectively limits the capacitor discharge current and continuously lowers the level of the fault current. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The medium voltage direct current (MVDC) is a promising direction of future shipboard power system (SPS). However, one of the main limitations encountered in its development is the fault isolation of DC side. This paper reveals the evolution process of short-circuit fault in typical MVDC SPS through equivalent circuit and transient simulation. Based on the analysis of protection needs, a superconducting current-limiting switch (SCLS) topology is proposed, which includes one superconducting coupled coil and two DC circuit breakers (DCCBs). The models of SCLS is built on MATLAB/Simulink and the current limiting principle and current sharing principle of SCLS are verified. The results show that the SCLS has effective current limiting performance and fault clearing effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

DC fault is one of the most important and critical challenges for stable operation of DC microgrids. Resistive type superconducting fault current limiter (R-SFCL) is an ideal protective solution to limit DC fault current. However, the effect of only using SFCL may further deteriorate the DC bus voltage stability. This paper first analyzes the effect of R-SFCL on DC microgrid under different operation modes and different fault locations, and then presents a coordinated control method of SMES-battery hybrid energy storage system (HESS) and SFCL in ground fault. This method can not only reduce the fault current level but also regulate the DC bus voltage. Finally, the comparative study is conducted in PSCAD/EMTDC, the feasibility and superiority of the proposed method is verified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Shunt capacitors are deployed for power factor correction (PFC) to reduce the load reactive power and to provide voltage support. Nonlinear loads, such as variable speed drives, can inject harmonics into the network. If the line impedance value produces a resonance with the PFC capacitor and the injected frequency coincides with the resonant frequency, an overvoltage is produced across the capacitor, which can lead to failure or explosion. To protect the PFC capacitor, a reactor can be connected in series with the PFC capacitor and tuned at the harmonic frequency of the system resonance. This paper proposes the use of a high temperature-superconducting reactor (HTSR) as the tuned reactor. The reactor will have an extremely high-quality factor (Q) compared to the normal reactor that can never be manufactured commercially with such a high Q. The performance of the HTSR reactor in terms of its ability to protect the capacitor from overvoltage and to reduce power losses has been investigated. The results are compared with those using the conventional (low Q) reactor and show that the HTSR can significantly improve filter performance and reduce power losses in the filter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A capacitor made of high-temperature superconducting (HTS) electrode plates and a dielectric layer, or “HTS capacitor” for short, has the potential advantages of working with other HTS devices at 77 K and producing low conductive loss at high frequency. It may have a specific application to cryogenic systems at high frequency, such as superconducting wireless power transfer (SWPT) systems. Working with HTS resonant coil in an adiabatic container, the HTS capacitor can also reduce the heat leakage of the cooling system. Considering a lack of relevant experimental study at present, an HTS capacitor composed of YBCO (YBa2Cu3O7- $_x$) tapes and a polyimide layer is proposed in this paper and tested in an SWPT system. Its characteristics and influences on the SWPT system are presented in detail by theoretic analysis and experimental investigation. A comparative experiment is carried out between the fabricated HTS capacitor and other capacitors made from normal materials. Finally, it is confirmed experimentally that the HTS capacitor can have a high-quality factor, work with the HTS resonant coil normally at 77 K, and provide the SWPT system with a performance enhancement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A highly efficient wireless power transfer (WPT) system is required in many applications to replace the conventional wired system. The high temperature superconducting (HTS) wires are examined in a WPT system to increase the power-transfer efficiency (PTE) as compared with the conventional copper/Litz conductor. The HTS conductors are naturally can produce higher amount of magnetic field with high induced voltage to the receiving coil. Moreover, the WPT systems are prone to misalignment, which can cause sudden variation in the induced voltage and lead to rapid damage of the resonant capacitors connected in the circuit. Hence, the protection or elimination of resonant capacitor is required to increase the longevity of WPT system, but both the adoptions will operate the system in nonresonance mode. The absence of resonance phenomena in the WPT system will drastically reduce the PTE and correspondingly the future commercialization. This paper proposes an open bifilar spiral coils based self-resonant WPT method without using resonant capacitors at both the sides. The mathematical modeling and circuit simulation of the proposed system is performed by designing the transmitter coil using HTS wire and the receiver with copper coil. The three-dimensional modeling and finite element simulation of the proposed system is performed to analyze the current density at different coupling distances between the coil. Furthermore, the experimental results show the PTE of 49.8% under critical coupling with the resonant frequency of 25 kHz. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Superconducting inductive pulsed power supplies have attracted a lot of attention due to its lower electrical loss and higher energy storage density than traditional inductors. To effectively improve charging rate and output continuous current pulses, a repetitive inductive pulsed power supply circuit topology based on high-temperature superconducting (HTS) pulsed power transformer was proposed and simulated in our previous studies. This paper aims to further study the feasibility of the repetitive inductive pulsed power supply circuit topology through experiments. A small air-core HTS pulsed power transformer and a bridge-type capacitor switching circuit were used to build the experimental platform. The experimental results show that the bridge-type capacitor switching circuit can shorten the charging time of each new cycle and the repetitive inductive pulsed power supply circuit is feasible for continuous current pulse output. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

DC system protection is more challenging than that for AC system due to the rapid rate of rise of the fault current and absence of natural current zero-crossing in DC systems. Superconducting fault current limiter (SFCL) in DC systems is a promising technology to reduce the fault current level and the rate of rise of the fault current, and also SFCLs have no resistance during normal operation. In this paper, the behaviors of an SFCL coil are investigated under both low impedance and high impedance fault conditions in DC systems. In the low impedance fault condition system, the SFCL coil performs effective limitation of the fault current level under different prospective fault current levels. The application of SFCLs with limited inductance in the DC system can be a potential solution to effectively suppress the fault current under low impedance short-circuit faults. The SFCL coil under the high impedance fault condition can only limit the prospective fault current when it is much higher than the critical current of the coil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the output power of wind farm is fluctuating, it is one of the important ways to improve the schedule ability of wind power generation to predict the output power of wind farm. The operation mode of tracking planned output takes the planned value issued by the grid dispatching as the control basis of wind power generation. This operation mode is easy to control, which not only meets the needs of power grid dispatching, but also improves the reliability and controllability of new energy generation. This paper introduces the traditional PI control strategy of SMES and combines the advantages of SMES and the characteristics of application scenarios, and introduces sliding mode variable structure control into SMES. Through simulation and comparison of two different control modes, it is verified that SMES adopting sliding mode variable structure control have the advantages of fast response speed and strong robustness, which can make the wind farm output stable power according to the planned value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A quasi-continuous high magnetic field is a special kind of pulsed magnetic field with a flat-top field longer than 100 ms. This paper proposes a hybrid power supply that consists of a capacitor power supply and a generator-rectifier power supply. A dual-coil magnet is powered to generate a 65 T/100 ms quasicontinuous high magnetic field with a ripple less than 500 ppm at the Wuhan National High Magnetic Field Center, Wuhan, China. A protection circuit consists of an R-C branch and a diode array is discussed for the worst short-circuit fault, which occurs between the first turns of inner coil and outer coil. This type of faultwill produce oscillation voltage with a high peak value and high frequency on the rectifiers. A self-adaptive PI controller with the coefficients corrected by a back propagation neural network is adopted to reduce the ripple of a flat-top. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this paper is to propose a dc current interruption technology for railway dc traction systems, consisting of a dc vacuum circuit breaker with a superconducting fault-current limiter (SFCL). To this end, a 1.5-kV dc circuit breaker prototype is designed, involving a dc vacuum circuit breaker and a resistive-type SFCL serially connected. The dc vacuum circuit breaker is developed with a commutation circuit to generate a reverse injection current, and the resistive-type SFCL is composed of yttrium barium copper oxide superconducting tape. An LC current source tested the 1.5-kV prototype, showing that, when the precharged capacitor voltage is 1.5 kV, the prospective current is 47 kA increasing at a rate of 9.4 A/μs. The SFCL limits this current to ~3 kA (peak value), and then, decreases the current to 2 kA after 6 ms, followed by successful clearance via the dc vacuum circuit breaker. The proposed 1.5-kV circuit breaker will successfully clear short-circuit faults up to 47 kA by first limiting the prospective current and then interrupting it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inductive pulsed power supply (IPPS) based on multiple high-temperature superconducting pulsed power transformer (HTSPPT) modules is a novel technology for electromagnetic launching. In a compact multimodule IPPS, the mutual couplings between HTSPPT modules are unavoidable. In this paper, an IPPS with the method of improved pulse-forming process which proved to be feasible by preliminary experiment is proposed to analyze the effect of the mutual couplings. The characteristics of the mutual coupling effect on the IPPS are presented in detail by theoretical analysis and parametric simulations. The evaluation indices reflecting performances of the IPPS under the mutual coupling effect are derived from simulations, including the energy storage capacity, flux linkage, axial tensile force, output current amplitude, and so on. Parametric simulations are executed with respect to the module arrangement, the number of modules, and the arrangement radius. Finally, the analysis of mutual coupling effect is summarized, and a strategy for exploiting mutual couplings between modules is put forward to improve IPPS performance. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

For the future applications of high-temperature superconducting (HTS) cables in the smart grid with power line communication (PLC), it would be unavoidable for HTS cables to experience the PLC signals. For the normal cables experiencing PLC signals, line trap is a commonly used inserted device to block signals from radiating across other cables. With HTS cables working at low temperature, superconducting line trap (SLT) based on HTS coil and HTS electrode capacitor might play a role to achieve a desired transmission path of PLC signals across HTS cables. Since there still remains a research gap of SLT, a prototype is proposed in this paper and its characteristics are presented by principle analysis as well as experimental research. It is found that SLT can offer a higher blocking impedance to carrier signals and produce much smaller loss at power frequency than the line trap made from normal materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this paper is to evaluate the engineering feasibility of high-frequency magnet systems for the magnetic hyperthermia cancer therapy. For the effective induction heating properties of the magnetic particles with a short-time cancer therapy, the target specifications of the magnet system are 0.06 T of the peak magnetic field with 200 kHz of the operating frequency and with 300 s (5 minutes) of the continuous or intermittent operation time. From the results, the magnet designed using 200-A copper Litz wires and a magnetic core enables the reduction of one turn voltage of the coil windings to 8.47 kV. The winding loss is 3.89 kW, which suggests that the magnet can be operated without a water cooling system. Single voltage source high-frequency inverter using commercially available SiC-MOSFET (<1.2 kV) can drive the magnet with balancer circuits using variable series capacitors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The superconducting dipole magnets of the Large Hadron Collider operate in a superfluid helium bath at 1.9 K. As a part of the magnet quench protection system, each dipole magnet is equipped with a bypass diode located in the helium bath. The connection between the superconducting magnet and the cold by-pass diode is made through a clamping system called "halfmoon," located at the lowest point of the cold-masses. This area is prone to receiving metallic debris residual from the assembly technological processes. The metallic debris might move and create an earth fault during helium flows that occur not only during the cool-down, warm-up, and flushing of the cryogenic installation but also during magnet quenches at high currents. In case of appearance, the earth fault is detected by the protection system of the circuit and as a consequence, the current is ramped down to zero. Subsequently, with the circuit current already at zero, the fault can be eliminated using a device denominated as the Earth Fault Burner. The fault elimination must follow a strict procedure as it is not fully risk-free. This paper describes the details of such earth fault elimination, including preliminary diagnostics and necessary hardware. Two examples from the LHC operation are described and discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Physical implementations of qubits can be extremely sensitive to environmental coupling, which can result in decoherence. While efforts are made for protection, coupling to the environment is necessary to measure and manipulate the state of the qubit. As such, the goal of having long qubit energy relaxation times is in competition with that of achieving high-fidelity qubit control and measurement. Here, we propose a method that integrates filtering techniques for preserving superconducting qubit lifetimes together with the dispersive coupling of the qubit to a microwave resonator for control and measurement. The result is a compact circuit that protects qubits from spontaneous loss to the environment, while also retaining the ability to perform fast, high-fidelity readout. Importantly, we show the device operates in a regime that is attainable with current experimental parameters and provide a specific example for superconducting qubits in circuit quantum electrodynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Since the accomplishment of the pulsedmagnetic field facility at the Wuhan National High Magnetic Field Center in 2013, five 65 T monolithic-coil magnets have been developed and used for scientific research. As the workhorse, the 65 T user magnets show excellent cooling performance and long service life. These user magnets have typical bore size of 21 and 23 mm. For electrical transport measurements, the magnets are energized by a 2 or 3-MJ capacitor bankwith crowbar circuit for~40-70 ms pulse duration. For magnetization measurements, shorter pulse duration of 11 ms for a field waveform with almost symmetrical rising and falling edges can be obtained with a 1.25-MJ capacitor bank that allows high-voltage reversal. The cooling time between two 60 T pulses ranges from 30 to 50 min depending on the magnets and the field waveform. Up to now, three of these magnets failed after 916, 583, and 947 pulses with the magnetic field above 60 T. The other two have delivered 706 and 56 pulses above 60 T and are still in operation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]